Fortinet Complements Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure With High-Performance SDN Security - Seite 2

FortiGate Connector for Cisco ACI

The open framework of Cisco ACI enables ecosystem partners such as Fortinet to seamlessly interoperate with the Cisco ACI fabric. The Fortinet SDNS framework provides the visionary path for security integration in a SDN or Network Function Virtualization (NFV) deployment and allows for a seamless experience with Cisco's Layer 2 and Layer 3 network fabric. The FortiGate Connector for Cisco ACI requires two components from Fortinet, the FortiGate device package to Cisco APIC; and FortiGate physical and virtual appliances. The connector allows customers to choose pre-defined application firewall policies and automate security orchestration for FortiGate appliances across Layer 4 - 7 fabrics.

"With the shift to agile, software-defined data centers comes increased security concerns for many organizations," said John Maddison, vice president of product and solutions at Fortinet. "The data center is the heart of the network where application workloads are modified, added, changed, or deleted through manual security provisioning-processes prone to human error. FortiGate Connector for Cisco ACI eliminates these cumbersome processes and automates security policies so they can be centrally orchestrated with better traffic visibility and scalability based on application workloads."

With this new offering, IT administrators can easily define the application security rules for different workloads in the Cisco APIC and configure the policies within FortiGate appliances. When a security policy is triggered during the application deployment lifecycle, Cisco's APIC redirects the application traffic through Fortinet FortiGate appliances for advanced firewall inspection including IP reputation, web filtering, anti-virus, DNS filtering, SSH inspection, IPS, and DDoS without manual intervention.

In addition, the integrated solution enables:

• Better visibility and security correlated with overlay and underlay networks
• Lower TCO from reduced OpEx
• Accelerated application and Layer 4 - 7 network security deployment
• Increased efficiency in service provisioning and network security segmentation

Supporting Quotes

"As a long-term joint customer, we see the commitment Fortinet and Cisco share in delivering applications while ensuring IT flexibility. The solution provides the capabilities to configure policies that simplify and automate next-generation firewall services efficiently throughout our infrastructure." - Erik Sohlman, senior manager infrastructure, Axians